A wide variety of food products comprise a base food or comestible having a topical coating to improve the taste, appearance, nutrition, texture, stability, improved shelf-life or other feature of the product. In particular, a wide variety of snack food products comprise a base food such as a fried expanded piece fabricated from a cooked cereal dough and having a seasoning coating. In particular, a wide variety of such snack products comprise a topical coating comprising an ingredient in particulate form, e.g., cheese powder. In other variations, a powder seasoning can be combined with a compound fat to provide a seasoned topical coating (sometimes referred to as a compound coating) to a snack food product base.
One problem long associated with many varieties of snack foods is the tendency of topically applied substances, such as seasonings and decorations (often referred to as “toppings” herein), to become separated from the base portion of the food product. Such separation can occur, for example, during the preparation, packaging or transit of the food item. Separation during preparation or packaging can result in increased production costs due to higher seasoning overuse and can complicate processing. Separation during packaging, or transit can result in loose toppings becoming collected at the bottom of the package, while the product reaching the consumer has less than the desired complement of topping thereon. (See, for example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,910,031 Topped Savory Snack Product issued Mar. 20, 1990).
A further type of undesirable separation of topping from snack food items occurs when the product is eaten. Frequently, the topping adheres to the fingers of the consumer. This phenomenon is referred to as “rub-off” or “fingerprinting” both by the industry and in the present application. Rub-off of toppings from any snack food item is undesirable because, again, the product reaching the mouth of the consumer includes a reduced amount of the toppings. Rub-off of toppings, especially powdery or oil or fat-based toppings, is undesirable as it can leave a residue upon the fingers of the consumer. Accordingly, the need exists for reducing all types of topping separation from snack food items prior to being consumed. A particular need exists for reducing the rub-off of powdery or oil and fat-based toppings onto the hands of consumers.
The present invention is directed to improvements in coated snack food items especially (but not exclusively) savory. The term “savory” is used herein as it is used in the industry to denote snack food items having a non-sweet dominant flavor. Many savory snack foods have saltiness and/or cheesiness as dominant flavors. Examples of savory snack foods include potato chips, pretzels, cheese puffs, corn chips, tortilla chips, crackers and the like. The dominant flavors of these snack foods sharply contrast with the sweet dominant flavors of non-savory snacks such as cookies, doughnuts and candies.
Savory snack food items frequently comprise a “base” food product portion and one or more toppings. Examples of snack food base portions include vegetable slices (e.g. fried potato slices of topped or seasoned potato chips), cooked dough pieces (e.g. of topped crackers or pretzels), and puffed food products (e.g. the extruded puffed corn collet of cheese-flavored puffs). Examples of common toppings include coarse and fine ground salt, pepper, seasoning powders such as garlic powder and onion powder, and fat and oil-based toppings such as cheese powders and granules.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,910,031 “Topped Savory Snack Foods” (issued Mar. 20, 1990 to Budd et al.) describe non-sweet sugar based binder compositions importantly including an anti-sweetness ingredient to address these problems. However, such sugar binder coating approaches can suffer from texture and/or appearance deficiencies. However, the '031 patent does not teach or suggest a dry step and the seasoning carrier was a sugar slurry, not an emulsion, which yields significantly different textural and visual properties.
According to the present invention, novel, seasoning bearing (in particulate form), film forming oil-in-water emulsion coating slurries are employed to improve the coating stability of base portions of snack food items. This coating protects against both rub off and melting and provides a unique visual and textural appeal. The present coating compositions are desirably free of any anti-sweetness ingredients. The present coating slurry compositions and methods of preparation provide other multiple surprising benefits as is described in detail below.